The Trump White House has faced a week of turmoil.
Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

The CEO of the US National Domestic Violence Hotline has said she hopes the controversy over the White House’s handling of domestic violence allegations against two members of staff will prompt the Trump administration to “engage in a new conversation” about its policy approaches to violence against women.

“The issue of domestic violence – certainly now it’s very close to the White House, and has been for some time,” said Katie Ray-Jones, adding that she hoped that “will prompt them to engage in a new conversation” about these issues.

The Trump White House has faced a week of turmoil over questions about why White House aide Rob Porter had kept his job despite his two ex-wives’ descriptions of the ways that he physically and emotionally abused them. Porter was forced out of the White House last week only after one of his ex-wives made public a graphic photograph of herself with a black eye, though senior staffers knew of some of the allegations against him long before that.

On Saturday, the president tweeted what was seen as a broad condemnation of the #MeToo movement to hold sexual abusers accountable, posting, “People’s lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as due process?”

On Sunday White House aide Kellyanne Conway claimed Trump was “very disturbed” by the allegations against Porter, despite his comments failing to express any sympathy for the alleged victims. Porter denies the allegations.

For the staffers who answer the phones at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the past year since Trump’s inauguration has been a grim one.

Abusers are now threatening “‘I’m going to get you deported if you call the police,’ ‘I’m going to hide your papers,’ or ‘I’m not going to help get your visa now,’” said Ray-Jones. Women have seen news stories about an undocumented woman arrested at a Texas court house by immigration agents moments after a judge granted her a protective order against a partner who allegedly punched, choked, kicked, and threw a knife at her.

Increasingly, staffers at the hotline can only advise immigrant women unwilling to seek help from law enforcement to go to their local shelters. When shelters are full, which they often are, their last resort is helping the women make a safety plan: talking a desperate woman through how she and her children can survive another night, or another few nights, while staying with the man abusing her.

“Heartbreak. Frustration,” Jones said, describing what it feels like to have no better options to offer women and other survivors of abuse. “I think we’re seeing higher rates of burnout in the organization. A higher rate of secondary trauma on advocates, because at times you’re at a loss.”

Roiled by the questions about domestic abusers in the White House, officials said last week that the president takes the issue of domestic violence very seriously.

Pressed on why the Trump administration has not appointed a White House adviser on violence against women, the administration’s argument was that the position was a new one, created by Obama and vice-president Joe Biden, not a traditional White House role.

“The administration takes the issue of domestic violence very seriously. The president’s budget will fully fund the Violence Against Women Act, and he intends to nominate a director of the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women,” deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters told the Guardian on Saturday.

Caroline Bettinger-López, who served for two years as the White House adviser on violence against women in the Obama administration, said that it was common for administrations to continue new positions launched by previous administrations.

“When a sexual predator-in-chief is leading our country from the White House, one would not think his highest priority would be to have an adviser on violence against women,” she said. “I think it’s a real sign of values.”

During the presidential campaign, audio of Trump bragging to a TV host that he had been able to get away with “grab[bing] women by the pussy” because he is famous was made public. At least twenty women have accused Trump of some kind of sexual assault or misconduct, including grabbing, kissing, or groping them without their consent. The White House’s position on these allegations is that the women are liars. Ivanka Trump, the president’s first wife, once used the word “rape” in describing one incident with him, but later wrote that, “I referred to this as a ‘rape’, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

Advocates said having an adviser on violence against women in the White House was important to having a national strategy on making progress to prevent violence.

“Having that direct link inside the administration was critical to leaders to make sure they really understood what women were facing,” Ray-Jones said.

It’s not just Trump’s immigration policy that makes advocates who work with survivors of domestic violence feel that they are losing ground. Cuts to safety net policies, like welfare and health insurance, also can affect whether people have the resources to leave a partner who is abusing them, Ray-Jones said. And then there’s the issue of gun control.

Callers to the domestic violence hotline often talk about the way that abusers use their guns to threaten them, even when the guns are not fired.

“What we hear from many of our contacts who reach out and talk about firearms is that they’re terrified to leave the relationship because they’re afraid he’s going to use that gun.” Women describe “waking up to hearing the safety [on the gun] being clicked off, women who have been raped by guns, women who say, ‘He sits there and cleans his gun and stares at me the whole time.’”

Trump and Republicans fiercely oppose any new national gun control legislation, and have blocked even modest measures to extend current domestic violence prohibitions to abusive dating partners, as well as to abusive spouses.

The increase in the numbers of immigrant women afraid to turn to law enforcement to protect them against violence has been a stark change, one that advocates saw happening simply due to Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants, even before he was elected president.

“We started hearing the uptick when we started hearing about the wall,” Ray-Jones said.

Law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego have reported stark drops in reporting of domestic violence and sexual assault cases by Latino residents, even as there have been no comparable drops in reporting among other groups.

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In April 2017, a national survey of hundreds of advocates who work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault found that 78% said they were hearing concerns from immigrant survivors of violence about contacting the police.

And even family members who might otherwise shelter women survivors trying to escape abusers are afraid of the consequences.

Survivors have said, “‘My family is saying they don’t want to get involved, they’re saying they’ll get deported,’” Ray-Jones said.